This invention is generally concerned with methods and apparatus for processing mailpieces, and more particularly with such methods and apparatus which include means for identifying the location and content of data thereon.
In recent years, postal services throughout the world have been making greater and greater demands upon mailers to conform to prescribed standards for locating different types of information on mailpieces, including, for example, locating data blocks corresponding to information concerning the addressee, addressor and postage value paid or to be paid, and mailpiece processing data including, for example, bar-coded sorting data. Additional standards are being set which dictate the format and content of such data blocks, including, for example, the format and data content of information pertaining to the class of mailing service, identity of each mailpiece of a batch including the number of mailpieces thereof, and the time of preparation and other accounting data. In general, such standards tend to shift at least some of the mailpiece processing burden, historically carried by the postal services, to the mailers, and otherwise enhance the capacity of postal services to rapidly process and deliver mailpieces. Accordingly, there is a worldwide trend amongst postal services to make worksharing demands on their mailing customers to produce mailpieces which can be more efficiently and cost effectively processed when delivered to the postal services.
Although considerable progress has been made in developing postal processing systems technologies, including, for example, optical character recognition and video imaging technologies, the vast majority of such technologies are either aimed at mail processing in a postal environment or are derivatives thereof. As a result, available systems suffer from two important shortcomings, insofar as mailers are concerned. First, they have been designed to process a wide variety of mailpieces at very high speeds, and are therefore overly sophisticated for processing relatively small volumes of standardized mailpieces. And, second, due to the large volume of mailpieces which must be processed by such systems, they must be robustly constructed to withstand long term wear and tear, with the result that their cost of manufacture and maintenance is prohibitively high for use by commercial mailers. Moreover, since the available systems have been designed to print data in accordance with postal service demands, and the majority of commercial mailers are also concerned with marking mailpiece with useful commercial data not demanded by postal services, available systems may or may not be adaptable for use in commercial applications.
With the above thoughts in mind, it has been concluded that there is a need for a simply constructed, low cost, mailpiece-processing, system, which includes structure for locating and interpreting the content of data blocks of mailpiece images at moderate speeds in a non-postal service, ie., mailer's, environment. Accordingly:
an object of the invention is to provide a low cost system for processing mailpieces; PA1 and another object is to provide a low cost system for processing and interpreting the content of data blocks of variable information on mailpieces.